Initiatives may lead to labor accord

Competing measures deal with outsourcing

Background: In 2006, San Diego voters approved a ballot measure to allow private companies to compete with city workers to provide services. But the city and unions have been unable to agree how to enact the managed competition policy.

What’s changing: Competing initiatives targeted for the November ballot would either allow the city to outsource without union input, or severely restrict businesses to compete for city services.

The future: Mayor Jerry Sanders and the unions are working toward a compromise on managed competition. It is unclear whether that would stop an initiative war.

San Diego  Competing ballot measures that would dramatically change the city of San Diego’s approach to contracting and outsourcing appear to have broken a logjam in negotiations over one of City Hall’s most contentious issues: managed competition.

Mayor Jerry Sanders and union leaders are close to reaching a compromise on how to implement managed competition, a four-year-old voter-approved initiative intended to allow private companies to vie with city workers to provide services.

It remains to be seen whether the compromise will be enough to avoid all-out war between two of the city’s most influential special interests — labor and business — ahead of the November election.

Each side is pushing ballot measures that would handicap the other by forcing certain rules on city leaders as they contemplate outsourcing in the future.

Sanders is stuck in the middle. He would like to keep both sides happy and avoid a battle that could derail his push to solve the city’s financial problems before he leaves office in 2012. The mayor has repeatedly said he wants his legacy to be fixing a future budget deficit last pegged at $72 million.

“I don’t know that war benefits anybody,” Sanders said of the potential ballot conflict. “What’s interesting is that it’s a tense time right now, and I think that all I can ask is that people just kind of take a deep breath and see what we can do. And if we can’t do things, people can go to their corners and do whatever they think they need to do.”

The dispute began in 2006 when voters approved a ballot initiative that called on city leaders to implement managed competition as a way to save taxpayer money by providing more efficient services and potentially reducing pension obligations. It has languished at the negotiating table since then as Sanders has tried to strike a deal with unions over how to enact the program.

The City Council, which has a labor-backed majority, rejected the mayor’s push last fall to move ahead without union support.

The inaction led Councilman Carl DeMaio to begin circulating a petition for an initiative that would force the city to seek competitive bids for certain services and allow the city to directly outsource without dealing with unions. He collected roughly 138,000 signatures, about 40,000 more than he needed to qualify the measure for the November ballot.

Now three competing ballot measures are being pushed by labor leaders and Jason Everitt, a researcher at the Center on Policy Initiatives, a nonprofit group that advocates for workers. The measures would require city contractors to disclose information under the state Public Records Act, allow city departments to bid on any contracts worth more than $250,000 and require voter approval for any development that includes more than $500,000 in taxpayer subsidies. A council committee will consider them on Wednesday.

“The theme between all three of these initiatives is that the taxpayers deserve a transparent, competitive, participatory process for city contracts,” Everitt told a council committee earlier this month. “They deserve to know where their dollars are being spent.”

DeMaio said the measures are nothing more than job killers that would scare aware business.

“It’s an all-out assault on San Diego’s economy,” he said. “Those measures would devastate our ability to attract jobs, to make San Diego attractive for private investment, and they would result in the growth of government and the in-sourcing of all work.”

The dueling ballot measures have renewed talks about managed competition, as neither business nor labor wants to see its opponent’s initiatives approved by voters. No details have been released on the potential compromise, but even if an agreement were reached, it might not be enough to stop the ballot battle.

T.J. Zane, executive director of the Lincoln Club of San Diego County, a pro-business group, said he’s concerned that any compromise that labor leaders agree to will deliver less savings than taxpayers deserve. The group is backing DeMaio.

“Regardless of what comes out of any potential compromise, it’s still full-bore for November for the initiative,” Zane said. “Frankly, it’s the mayor’s prerogative to sit on the sidelines, and if he decides to continue to do so, we’re confident we’re going to make this measure pass with or without his support.”

Lorena Gonzalez, head of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, said the mayor can stop a lengthy battle by standing up to contractors and developers who she said want to cut the wages of everyday workers to boost their profits.

“This has implications on whether San Diego can stand as one city or if it’s just a war ground between people who want zero regulations and zero rules, you know, San Diego’s version of BP, or if you want some sensible rules and guidelines to guide contracting,” Gonzalez said.

No matter what appears on the ballot, it will cost taxpayers. Each measure comes at a price of about $250,000.